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Eight Months After Father's Death, Chimamanda Adichie Loses Mother

The ace novelist had last year narrated how her father's death left her unsettled.

Renowned Nigerian novelist-cum-feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has lost her mother, Grace Adichie, to the cold hands of death.

It was gathered that 78-year-old Grace breathed her last in Awka, Anambra State, on Monday.

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Details of her death were sketchy as of the time of filing this report.

The development comes about eight months after the author lost James Adichie, her father, after a brief illness.

The ace novelist had last year narrated how her father's death left her unsettled.

She had said, “And just like that my life has changed forever. June 7, there was Daddy on our weekly family zoom call, talking and laughing. June 8, he felt unwell.

“Still, when we spoke he was more concerned about my concussion. June 9, we spoke briefly, my brother Okey with him. 'Ka chi fo', he said. His last words to me. June 10, he was gone.

“Because I loved my father so much, so fiercely, so tenderly, I always at the back of my mind feared this day. But he was in good health. I thought we had time.
“I thought it wasn’t yet time. I have come undone. I have screamed, shouted, rolled on the floor, pounding things. I have shut down parts of myself.

“We are broken, bereft, holding on to one another, planning a burial in these COVID-scarred times. I’m stuck in the US, waiting. The Nigerian airports are closed. Everything is confusing, bewildering.

“Sleep is the only respite. On waking, the enormity, the finality, strikes – I will never see my father again. Never again. I crash and go under. The urge to run and run, to hide from this.”
She is, however, yet to react to the death of her mother.
 

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